Wednesday, November 30, 2005

We here at the M Zone pride ourselves on having a long, distinguished history of biased, pro-Michigan journalistic integrity going back almost two months. If you recall, it was only a few short days ago that this very site blew the lid off the fake "OSU Potty Training" photo, exposing it for Photoshopped fraud that it was.

And after you read Yost's expose' below which sheds light on Street & Smith's smear campaign against U-M, the M Zone will take its rightful place among the pantheon of investigative journalism, joining such benchmarks as Woodward and Bernstein exposing Watergate, Edward R. Murrow bringing down Joseph McCarthy and that x-rated website which first aired the Paris Hilton video. But we couldn't have done it without you, our readers. That's why we'd especially like to thank those of you whose posts helped uncover this Plot Against Michigan.Sincerely,The M Zone Staff--------------------------------------As I stated in my post Monday, I was quite surprised to read in Street & Smith's "50 Greatest College Football Programs of All Time" that Michigan allegedly had 3 "Major NCAA Infractions" in football (which was one of the rankings criterion a school was penalized for). I was always under the impression we had no violations.

Well, lo and behold, after somebody posted a link on this site to the NCAA's own database for infractions, it turns out, just as I and most of you thought, Michigan's football program has never been cited by the NCAA for any major infractions.

Furthermore, regular M Zone contributor BaggyPantsDevil did a little more research and discovered ours wasn't the only error. The number of major NCAA infractions among the magazine's top ten should look like this:

Now, I could give a rat's ass about Street & Smith misstating this information for the purposes of their poll. These polls are only created to foster debate in order to sell magazines. No big deal. What does upset me, and should upset any Michigan fan, is this information being presented as "fact" out there on newsstands by a reputable sports magazine. When others read it who aren't as familiar with Michigan's program, they will be under the impression that error is true.

Thus, below is the contact info for Street & Smith's Specialty Publications so Michigan fans can drop them a line to let them know about their mistake. Hopefully it will be corrected for future publications.

11 comments:

I sent an e-mail to Street & Smith’s yesterday about the errors in the publication. No response yet, they’re probably assembling a high powered legal team as I write this.

Also, in a fit of paranoia, I saved the webpages citing each violation. For some reason I had that great fear that tomorrow would show the University of Spoiled Children with zero major violations. Anyway, I’m e-mailing them to you so you can use them to bring down the might of the M Zone upon those would attempt to besmirch Michigan football. Or, simply use them to avoid having to go through the clumsy search function at the NCAA site.

Oh .... and I will be sending a nice little email to SS also known as the Nazi secret police. After reading Yost's rant I went to my local Borders and shelled out five bones for that trashy magazine. Note ... the girls of FHM is now on newsstands and will make an excellent stocking stuffer.

I just received an e-mail from Mike Fresina, Publisher-Executive Editor, Street & Smith's Specialty Publications. This is what he said:

Donald,Thanks you for your note. You are actually the very first person to contact us with this information. The error had gone unnoticed during the title's first two months on the newsstand. It is embarrassing and inexcusable.For now, our focus is finding out how such an error made it into the book. Our numbers are checked and rechecked. In fact, USC - hit with zero infractions - actually has five. In the months it took to put this together, we often wondered how that was possible and even called our researcher in and had him show us his research to prove USC's guiltlessness. It just seemed so unlikely that SC had never been 'convicted.' In their case, their ranking changes, moving Oklahoma to No. 2 and USC to No. 3.In Michigan's case, the rank wouldn't change, but the program is marked by infractions that it doesn't deserve. If we were a periodical, we could run a retraction or correction. Since this is a one-time piece - not likely to be updated for at least five years - there is nothing we can do to correct the error. We pride ourselves on accuracy and this is a BIG error.As stated, we are investigating how this happened to avoid making a similar mistake in the future. We do have some concern about the NCAA web site. The site has recently been updated, and is much more user-friendly than it was when this research was conducted. It is certainly possible, but not permissible, that the errors were made in our transfer of the information.Thank you, again, for calling this to my attention.Michael

Maybe I should send him an e-mail detailing the characteristics of the wolverine so that can also get corrected five years from now.

Does routinely-crawling-into-a-shell-and-playing-conservatively-during-the-last-half-of-the-last-quarter-of-a-football-game-allowing-an-undeserving-opponent-to-come-back-and-look-like-heroes count as a violation?

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